In yet another attempt to block a public release of a document which purports to show how the FBI and DOJ abused their powers and politically weaponized their agencies during the 2016 election cycle, the deep state threw a Hail Mary pass, a last ditch effort by claiming their were "material omissions," in the much-talked about four-page report, not expecting that Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee David Nunes would call their bluff by publicly daring them to "make public, to the greatest extent possible, all the information they have on these abuses."
The FBI takes seriously its obligations to the FISA Court and its compliance with procedures overseen by career professionals in the Department of Justice and the FBI. We are committed to working with the appropriate oversight entities to ensure the continuing integrity of the FISA process.
With regard to the House Intelligence Committee’s memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it. As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.
The memo, which reportedly names former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who recently stepped down amidst the controversy, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and former FBI Director James Comey, is four pages of findings garnered from classified information, which would be the "material omissions."
Nunes, instantly fired back practically daring the FBI to then provide that "material" themselves in a manner consistent with protecting sources and methods with his statement posted to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence website, titled "Nunes Statement on FBI, DOJ Objections to Release of HPSCI Memo."
“Having stonewalled Congress’ demands for information for nearly a year, it’s no surprise to see the FBI and DOJ issue spurious objections to allowing the American people to see information related to surveillance abuses at these agencies. The FBI is intimately familiar with ‘material omissions’ with respect to their presentations to both Congress and the courts, and they are welcome to make public, to the greatest extent possible, all the information they have on these abuses. Regardless, it’s clear that top officials used unverified information in a court document to fuel a counter-intelligence investigation during an American political campaign. Once the truth gets out, we can begin taking steps to ensure our intelligence agencies and courts are never misused like this again.”
Democrats, in an effort to protect the previous administration from the FISA abuses allegedly detailed in the memo, using America's top intelligence agencies against an opposing party's political candidate, first all voted against allowing their fellow lawmakers from seeing the memo, then all voted against releasing it to the public, and now are claiming that Nunes "altered" the doument and insisting on another House Intelligence Committee vote to release it to the public.
Nunes countered their attempt to delay the inevitable release, with a statement from his spokesperson:
"In its increasingly strange attempt to thwart publication of the memo, the Committee Minority is now complaining about minor edits to the memo, including grammatical fixes and two edits requested by the FBI and by the Minority themselves," Langer said. "The vote to release the memo was absolutely procedurally sound, and in accordance with House and Committee rules. To suggest otherwise is a bizarre distraction from the abuses detailed in the memo, which the public will hopefully soon be able to read for themselves."
Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, knowing the release of the memo was coming, then drafted their own memo, proposed a vote on releasing it to the full House, which was passed, but at the same time tried to get them to vote on releasing theirs to the public, before it had gone through the same procedure as the original memo went through, which Republicans, who have the majority on commitee, voted against.
The White House is being quoted as saying the memo will be "released quickly," with reports indicating it could be public by Thursday or Friday, while the MSM is already pushing out Democrat talking points, with Rep. Adam Schiff, who has been the most vocal in trying to prevent the release, claiming "It ... increases the risk of a constitutional crisis by setting the stage for subsequent actions by the White House to fire (Special Counsel Robert) Mueller or, as now seems more likely, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein," as written in an op-ed at The Washington Post. (Source - Reuters)
This gives more credence to something Rep. Trey Gowdy stated on television on Tuesday morning, when he said "My Democratic colleagues didn’t want us to find this information. They did everything they could to keep us from finding this information. I think it will be embarrassing to Adam Schiff once people realize the extent to which he went to keep them from learning any of this. That would be the embarrassment..."
Gowdy then went on to inform the public of how far Schiff actually has gone to prevent not only the public from obtaining information, but what actions he took to prevent the House Intelligence Committee from obtaining the information themselves to provide oversight, stating "I mean, going to court to help Fusion GPS so we can’t find out they paid for the dossier, and that they were working for the DNC. That’s a pretty big step to go to court to try to keep the American people from learning something. So, if it were up to Adam Schiff, you wouldn’t know about Hillary Clinton’s email. You wouldn’t know about the server. You wouldn’t know about the dossier. I do find it ironic that he has his own memo right now because if it were up to him, we wouldn’t know any of it." (H/T ZH)
FBI MISCONDUCT UPDATE
More information is now coming out about Andrew McCabe, the former Deputy FBI Director, who was forced out a month before his planned retirement, just one day after FBI Director Christopher Wray viewed the FISA abuse memo, and former FBI Director James Comey, who reportedly withheld information from Congress about the Clinton emails that were found on Huma Abedin's husband, Anthony Weiner's laptop.
Text messages between two FBI officials reveal that former FBI Director Andrew McCabe waited at least a month before informing Congress or then-FBI Director James Comey about newly found emails in the Hillary Clinton email investigation during the fall of 2016
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that it had obtained text messages between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that showed McCabe knew of thousands of new emails pertaining to Clinton's private email server used at the State Department on or before September 28, 2016 — a month before Comey informed Congress about the emails on Oct. 28.
McCabe's apparent inaction on the emails, which were found on the laptop of disgraced New York Rep. Anthony Weiner (D) during his sex crimes investigation, is the subject of an FBI inspector general investigation, which seeks to discover whether McCabe withheld the information from the public for political reasons.
If the leak to the liberal website the Daily Beast is correct as to McCabe, Comey, and Rosenstein being implicated in FISA abuses, by obtaining a warrant to surveil Trump campaign members by using the Kremlin sourced, Steele dossier which was funded by the Clinton campaign and the DNC, that makes Rosenstein the last man standing out of those three.
As such, he would be in the crosshairs, which creates a huge mess for the DOJ, specifically in regards to the Mueller's investigation, which to date, has not produced any indictments directly related to Russia collusion with any Trump campaign team member to meddle in the 2016 presidential election, which was Mueller's main mandate. Four indictments have come through, all process crimes. Two for lying to the FBI and two for charges unrelated to the 2016 election in any way, dealing with issues that began before Donald Trump even began his presidential campaign.
This puts the DOJ in a bind. Rosenstein is directly in charge of oversight on the Mueller investigation, since AG Jeff Sessions recused himself, on the advice of the Ethics division, from Russia/election related investigations.
If Rosenstein is forced out, steps down or is terminated, someone else will have to be appointed as Mueller's watch dog.
If Rosenstein did use the Steele dossier to extend surveillance on a Trump campaign team member, that also brings into question whether the evidence that Mueller has compiled was all legally tainted under Fruit of the Poisonous Tree doctrine.
That is the best case scenario for the deep state... the worst, is that the memo provides the basis to show that the "evidence" obtained in the entire Russia investigation was manufactured as an "insurance policy" by deep state members in order to discredit an incoming president, in an attempt to overthrow a duly elected President.
Is it any wonder why the Democrats are freaking out? They spent the whole of last year screaming RUSSIA/TRUMP collusion.
BOTTOM LINE
Frankly when all the hoopla about the memo became public, we thought it would simply be confirmation of bias and abuses under Obama, which is what many have been asserting since the whole "Russia collusion" narrative started being pushed by members of the Obama administration, Democrats, and the media after the election. Now the level of desperation being shown on the part of the FBI, and Democrats, in their constant attempts to prevent the public from seeing the memo, indicates the information contained within, not only confirms our initial suspicions, which the MSM called "conspiracy," but could force a complete purge of deep state members, while implicating high level former Obama officials in criminal actions.
